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nashy
Senior Contributor

Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

Hi everyone,

 

As you many of you know, we currently have our wonderful guide role in our community. This is a member who helps to role model the forum principles and help orientate, welcome and support new members. We have had some ideas and thoughts about wanting to offer more opportunities for different roles in the community.

 

As the forums have grown we have noticed some flags:

 

  • We only provide the one opportunity for members to get involved in an official way
  • Criteria to become a CG is quite specific which means fewer community members are able to apply
  • Having a small number of Community Guides risks pressure to carry too many responsibilities potentially and means that we can’t always get to all the posts that we might want to
  • We want to offer more members the opportunity to upskill in peer support

 

As a first idea, based on what we have seen other communities do successfully and thinking about how we can provide more opportunities for a range of responsibility levels we thought about growing the Community Guide program into a broader Participation Program having two components of this program:

 

  • There could be Program A and Program B for instance:

    • Program A would be low commitment, low responsibility, have self-directed training and be quite autonomous

    • Program B would be a higher level of commitment, more training and support, more responsibility and more tasks within the community. There would then be more potential for this to be a more official peer supporter role

Having shared our thoughts above, we would love to know your thoughts and how you feel about this idea? Smiley Very Happy Look forward to hearing from you all!

9 REPLIES 9

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

ReachOut did this well with their builder program.

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

Hi @nashy   I'm surprised to see you've had so little response here.  I know there are at least a few people around the forums who would like to step up their role here.  If I see them mentioning that I will tell them about this discussion.  I think having plan A and plan B is a really good idea.  I'm still curious as to what  " this to be a more official peer supporter role" would look like, particularly as I am doing further training in peer support with a local organisation that is all PWD - by and for - at the moment.

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

@nashy  I like the idea of having different options for getting more involved but I don’t really have a good idea of what that would look like and if I am honest I don’t even understand the current system, perhaps if there was a more concrete idea or maybe a bit more detail people might be able to say more but I certainly have no idea how or what the system now involves. 

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

@nashy 

I have noticed there are community elders. Is this an official role with defined responsibilities?

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

Must admit I have been flat out with Christmas and did not "see" this til now. 

 

@Former-Member  My understanding was that we are retired community guides. 

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

Thats my understanding too @Appleblossom @Former-Member 

 

When a Community Guide retires from offcial Guide duties, they are given the honour of a Community Elder title. A reward for their efforts I expect, which is highly appropriate. My understanding is that Community Elders do not have an official role once they retire from Guide duties and they lose access to the Guide's inner sanctum forum.

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

When a Community Guide retires from offcial Guide duties, they are given the honour of a Community Elder title --- very true @Former-Member , @Former-Member 

we have a few community elders who are still  very involved in the forum but without the ongoing training as community guides

but now they are thinking of having 2 programs for upcomeing community guides and exsiting community guides xxx

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

@nashy I think it’s a brilliant idea.

Re: Increasing peer support opportunities in the forums? What do you think?

Hello @Former-Member  how are you tonight 

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